Tips for Using Goals and Steps

Being able to capture and track goals and associated steps is important to drive action, outcomes and foster personal accountability. There are numerous bodies of knowledge and theories as to how goal should be written and how they should be utilised in coaching. Achiiva allows you to utilise goal and steps in what ever way best supports your coaching approach. Below are some of the great ways that we believe the goals functionality can be used to support great coaching outcomes.

Action Agreements – Use goals to capture key actions that yo
ur Client has agreed to take between Coaching sessions. This provides a simple means to ensure accountability and track progress. You can capture these agreements during your session or immediately after, and, either of you can edit them if them to ensure you are both clear on what was agr
eed.

Capture the ‘Why’ – There is a lot of research backing up the fact that if we know ‘why’ we are pursuing a goal or an action we will be more motivated to keep progressing. Use the description field in the goals and/or steps to capture the ‘why’. When you view the goals each goal card will display not only the goal, but the ‘why’ as well, providing a powerful daily reference point.

Add steps over time – Often all the steps to achieve a goal are not obvious at the start. Just add the steps that are known now and as more come to mind you can add them later.

Capture Progress Comments – The description field in steps and goals can also be used to capture progress notes. You have upto 1000 characters in each description. If you capture notes here it is really easy to refer back to the specific goal or step and track progress and notes at the same time.

Measure backwardsplan forwards – Sometimes we aren’t great at defining steps we are going to take to progress towards our goals, so capture the goal but don’t add any steps. At the end of each week ask your client to reflect on what steps or actions they took in the last week that contributed to progress on their goal. This can be a powerful motivator. Have them add those steps ‘in hindsight’ and mark them as complete. Then use this backward measurement as a way to guide actions for the next week.

Have a goal called “Small Things I achieved this month”. If you don’t like tracking progress against specific goals, it can be motivating to ask your client to record in ‘hindsight’ small achievements, wins or memorable moments. As above, they can add them as steps and mark them as complete. At the end of each month you have a great record of small steps and wins along the journey.

Brain Storm Steps – Brain storm steps. It doesn’t matter what order you capture them in because you can always change the order later.